Portugal
theartsdesk at the Setúbal Music Festival 2018: youth leads the wayFriday, 15 June 2018
"Get those creatures off the stage, or I won't answer for what I'll do". The exclamation of the Prima Donna in the backstage prologue of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, about to share her grand opera with lower forms of theatrical life, seems... Read more... |
CD: Dreamweapon - SOLThursday, 15 February 2018
Dreamweapon’s second album, SOL, is a spaced-out trip of oceanic psychedelia that calls on the listener to pay full attention and sink into their potent motoric vibes. Free of any hippy-dippy fluffiness, Dreamweapon may be experts in laying down the... Read more... |
DVD: The OrnithologistTuesday, 07 November 2017
While bird-lovers will certainly not be disappointed by Portuguese auteur João Pedro Rodrigues’ new film, the ambitions of The Ornithologist stretch considerably beyond such avine fascinations. Its opening title, “Whoever approaches the Spirit will... Read more... |
WOMAD 2017, Charlton Park review - multicultural nirvana transcends mud-bath conditionsMonday, 31 July 2017
Now in its 35 year, Womad is embedded into British festival culture, flying the flags of a musical multiculturalism that is about breaking down barriers and building new relationships. It’s not something you want to lose.Aside from pleasurable... Read more... |
Paula Rego: Secrets and Stories review - 'in pictures you can let all your rage out'Sunday, 26 March 2017
“My mother has always been a bit of a mystery to me not only as an artist but also as a mum,” declares Nick Willing by way of introduction to his film for BBC Two on the painter Paula Rego, who turned 82 in January. What follows is as far removed... Read more... |
Lula Pena, Café OtoMonday, 13 March 2017
Lula Pena is a Portuguese singer who takes fado (or "phado" as she calls it) into new directions and musical horizons. She is one of the most intense performers you are likely to hear and, with only three albums in the last 20 years, keeps a lowish... Read more... |
Ana Moura, BarbicanWednesday, 28 September 2016
“If someone asked me what fado is,” says Ana Moura, in her introduction to “Lilac Wine”, “I would tell them that it means something like this song.” And with its notes of sadness, yearning and loss – fado means destiny or fate – this classic number... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Bitori, Space EchoSunday, 24 July 2016
Since achieving international success in the final years of the 1980s, the late Cesária Évora has dominated much of globe’s perception of music from the Cape Verde (officially Cabo Verde). This fascinating pair of releases reveal other aspects which... Read more... |
Arabian NightsSaturday, 07 May 2016
Early in the first part of his sprawling metafictional docu-whatsit Arabian Nights, the director Miguel Gomes is reflected in a café window as he flees his crew for conceiving the absurdly overambitious project he’s set up. It was "the dumbest... Read more... |
Horse MoneyTuesday, 15 September 2015
Pedro Costa’s Horse Money begins with a silent montage of Jacob Riis’s grim photographs of late 19th-century Manhattan slum dwellers, some of them former slaves or their offspring. One photo shows a bowler-hatted young black man sitting athwart a... Read more... |
CD: 10.000 Russos - 10.000 RussosWednesday, 29 July 2015
There is something strange happening in mainland Europe at the moment. Perhaps this has been spurred on by a feeling that the old certainties of the past aren’t quite so solid, but a mind-expanding psychedelia with an eye for the dance-floor and... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Setúbal: Youth and music under the jacarandasWednesday, 02 July 2014
José Mourinho is Setúbal’s most famous son. Non-Portuguese readers are not expected to know the two other celebrities most feted by this extraordinary port city on the estuary of the River Sado, with miles of sandy beaches opposite where a school of... Read more... |
